Webmaster forums began to fill with comments late last week from users saying they had received friendly account disablement termination notices from Google Adsense.
A Google spokesperson confirmed a review is underway: we continually conduct automated and manual reviews of publishers and sites that violate our policies. In some cases, violations of our program policies will result in termination from AdSense.
The account closures appear restricted at the moment to Adsense users engaged in made-for-Adsense webmastering, sometimes called MFA, or Adsense arbitrage.
Adsense arbitrage is the process of buying Adwords advertising on Google.com for low cost-per-click search terms, but sending the traffic to pages filled with Adsense ads for high-cost keywords.
An arbitrageur may, for example, buy Adwords against cheaper keywords such as digital watches which send searchers to a page filled with keywords relating to Rolex, which cause ads for Rolex watches to be displayed, with higher CPC prices.
If arbitrageurs find a popular and profitable niche, such as one where they can buy traffic for $0.10 per visitor and receive an average $0.20 click in return, the amount of profit is essentially only limited by how much they want to invest in traffic and how popular a keyword it is.
Such a model is, however, against Google’s terms of service. Adsense policies include a ban on placing ads on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant. Arbitrage web pages typically have no outbound links except the advertising.
Those customers who have received termination notices were informed that their accounts would be closed at the end of the month, but that they would be paid in full for their earnings to date. Some of these users were earning tens of thousands of dollars a month.
While Google also makes money from these clicks, the feeling is that by improving the quality of sites upon which Adsense ads are allowed to appear advertiser confidence will go up, the amount of money they are willing to pay will go up, and the net result is financially positive.
It’s not clear whether turning off arbitrageurs could have a short-term negative impact on Google’s revenue, or whether any such impact would be material. It seems unlikely, however.
Google’s move could have some benefit to Yahoo, which operates the competing Yahoo Publisher’s Network. In the past, YPN has been a refuge for those denied Adsense accounts.
